Hemingway, I think, said that first-time spectators at bullfights are shocked, not at the death of the bull (for that is the point of the exercise) but at the death of the horses.
It seems that before the matador appears, men on horses stick spikes in the bull’s shoulders to make him angry. This works. He responds by charging at the horses. Their death is shocking because it is incidental: they are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like the police officers mown down like Space Invaders in Leon. Or Ben Kinsella.
Or Jacintha Saldanha.
I’m sure it is very amusing having a joke at the expense of someone rich and famous. I expect it is fun throwing rocks at fire crews, or attacking linesmen. And if those people suffer, I suppose they (like the bull) must accept this as their purpose in life. And if someone else dies because the fire engine fails to arrive, we shake our heads in sorrow and say we didn’t mean any harm.
But even convicted prisoners are protected by national and international law from being publicly humiliated. Nurses, it seems, are not.
I don’t pretend, of course, that the UK has a clean record in the humane treatment of prisoners (or nurses). We used, for example, to send convicts to Australia. But these days, we recognise that this is cruel and inhuman. After all, Australia contains radio stations like 2Day FM.
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